Come Fly With Me – I Think Outside the Net!

Damage Control Cannot Wait

Damage control cannot wait. The minute you have a less than favorable situation you have to take action.

I have been working with someone for the last two days who had damage done 4 years ago and it is preventing people from doing business with them to this day. They did not do damage control when they should have and it is costing them.

The nature of the complaint against them, while personal and probably at the time thought of as trivial, is anything but that because it is on Google and guess what? Google doesn’t care and Google will not take anything off their site without a court order. Think I am kidding? I am not.

Do you know how much money that can cost? Think of all those attorney fees to start with and then add up the time you spend when you could be doing things that make money.

I started digging today into this a little more since I knew I was going to write about damage control. The first thing I found was written by someone in the hospitality industry where you know testimonials go viral.

Sharlyn Lauby said this:

I spent many years of my career in the hospitality business and the first rule of thumb when dealing with customers was, “if a guest had a positive experience, they’ll tell 3 people and if they had a negative experience, they’ll tell 10.” That same idea holds true in the new media world, except the numbers have grown exponentially. Instead of it being 3 people – it’s 3,000, or instead of 10 – it’s perhaps 100,000. The numbers aren’t meant to scare you. But what should you do when something goes wrong?

Sharlyn is right – many people will see an online complaint and you end up running around with a big fire hose trying to put out the flames.

That hose can get very heavy – and tiring in the case of putting out damage control fires. Help prevent them- be proactive and do the right thing.